Access vs. SQL
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
Since Access is file-based and not port-based for connections, it is considerably slower when multiple people access the Access DB. In the past I was guiding a web based project that used ASP/Access and it kept crashing saying too many users :-( So watch out and make sure you don't have too many users trying to access Access at once. Nish p.s. I feel a little silly saying access Access. If this was MS Word, it would have deleted the repeated word I bet :-)
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
Cutoff for #users for Access is, I thought, about 50. The only real way to find out a cutoff point is by testing your particular application. Personally I wouldn't even bother with Access. cheers, Chris Maunder
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
Access is slow, period. Tables cannot have more than 65K records, and a MDB file cannot be larger than 2GB. Access was never intended for server work. Why do so many people insist on using it over the web? SQL Server has three different versions if you want to go small scale and not pay as much money. Or, if you really don't want to pay money, go the MySQL, PostgreSQL, mSQL, etc. route. You'll save yourself a lot of headache after the product is finished this way. Jeremy Falcon Imputek
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
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Since Access is file-based and not port-based for connections, it is considerably slower when multiple people access the Access DB. In the past I was guiding a web based project that used ASP/Access and it kept crashing saying too many users :-( So watch out and make sure you don't have too many users trying to access Access at once. Nish p.s. I feel a little silly saying access Access. If this was MS Word, it would have deleted the repeated word I bet :-)
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
If you are not already using any special feature in Access (I mean Jet DB), move to MSDE. MSDE is free and you can upgrade to SQL Server without any code change. My article on a reference-counted smart pointer that supports polymorphic objects and raw pointers
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Access is slow, period. Tables cannot have more than 65K records, and a MDB file cannot be larger than 2GB. Access was never intended for server work. Why do so many people insist on using it over the web? SQL Server has three different versions if you want to go small scale and not pay as much money. Or, if you really don't want to pay money, go the MySQL, PostgreSQL, mSQL, etc. route. You'll save yourself a lot of headache after the product is finished this way. Jeremy Falcon Imputek
Jeremy Falcon wrote: Why do so many people insist on using it over the web? because compared to the SQLServer management screens, Access is a user-friendly. Access has that sweet interactive front end and doesn't requires "services" or anything else. it's like Excel, but with records. -c
When history comes, it always takes you by surprise.
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
Hi Chris, I can answer this one and with some authority too! :) I've worked with both for years for business apps. Ideally if you are making an application that will have "legs" you would make a data access layer in your application that sits between the program and the database itself. This layer would contain all the SQL commands and anything else related to the specific database and the program above that layer would not care what type of database there was. This would ensure that in future if you moved from SQL to Oracle for example you would only need to change that one layer. If you find yourself putting a query within your business logic part of your program code stop because it's "madness" in the long term. :) My answer now would always be to go SQL server route because of scaleability. Because you can use and distribute the MSDE SQL server engine for free it doesn't make sense to start with anything else 99% of the time for any app that is more than just a little in-house utility. Access (JET 4.0) databases are file based so performance really depends upon the actual size of the tables being queried and the number of simultaneous users on a network accessing it. People will often make generalizations that Access is always slower, this is not true at all, in some circumstances Access is faster than MSDE for example. There are really three options if your considering Access versus SQL server because there is also the MSDE which is a "light" version of SQL server that has the advantage of complete compatibility with SQL server for future scaleability and is free to use and distribute if you have a product that comes with it. (i.e. Visual studio professional, Office professional etc). SQL server - Fast server based. It is inherently fast for many reasons, but when comparing against JET (Access) it is faster in cases where a client has to query a large table because the server processes the query and only returns the results of the query. - Saves on network utilization because of the above - Can be scaled up simply by adding better hardware. - Will allow for terrabytes of data - Nearly unlimited number of connections supported - Pricey - comes with many management and administrative tools MSDE - Fast server based - Maximum of 2GB of total database size - Has built in throttle back mechanism that starts to deliberately slow performance when the 11th or more connection is made to it. - Has no managment tools so you need to programatically build databases and administrate
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Hi Chris, I can answer this one and with some authority too! :) I've worked with both for years for business apps. Ideally if you are making an application that will have "legs" you would make a data access layer in your application that sits between the program and the database itself. This layer would contain all the SQL commands and anything else related to the specific database and the program above that layer would not care what type of database there was. This would ensure that in future if you moved from SQL to Oracle for example you would only need to change that one layer. If you find yourself putting a query within your business logic part of your program code stop because it's "madness" in the long term. :) My answer now would always be to go SQL server route because of scaleability. Because you can use and distribute the MSDE SQL server engine for free it doesn't make sense to start with anything else 99% of the time for any app that is more than just a little in-house utility. Access (JET 4.0) databases are file based so performance really depends upon the actual size of the tables being queried and the number of simultaneous users on a network accessing it. People will often make generalizations that Access is always slower, this is not true at all, in some circumstances Access is faster than MSDE for example. There are really three options if your considering Access versus SQL server because there is also the MSDE which is a "light" version of SQL server that has the advantage of complete compatibility with SQL server for future scaleability and is free to use and distribute if you have a product that comes with it. (i.e. Visual studio professional, Office professional etc). SQL server - Fast server based. It is inherently fast for many reasons, but when comparing against JET (Access) it is faster in cases where a client has to query a large table because the server processes the query and only returns the results of the query. - Saves on network utilization because of the above - Can be scaled up simply by adding better hardware. - Will allow for terrabytes of data - Nearly unlimited number of connections supported - Pricey - comes with many management and administrative tools MSDE - Fast server based - Maximum of 2GB of total database size - Has built in throttle back mechanism that starts to deliberately slow performance when the 11th or more connection is made to it. - Has no managment tools so you need to programatically build databases and administrate
That is a wonderful summary, and informed me about things that I've always wondered about. I've been using Access for the last 5 years or so because most of my client's applications are single user, or in a couple cases, no more than 5 simultaneous users. I'll definitely be looking at MSDE now, though. If you find yourself putting a query within your business logic part of your program code stop because it's "madness" in the long term. I totally agree, but I find that I don't really practice what you preach. It hasn't really been a problem, either. I'm not sure why, except that maybe I do some really good up-front schema design first. I really need to stop being so lazy, though. Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Sensitivity and ethnic diversity means celebrating difference, not hiding from it. - Christian Graus
Every line of code is a liability - Taka Muraoka
Microsoft deliberately adds arbitrary layers of complexity to make it difficult to deliver Windows features on non-Windows platforms--Microsoft's "Halloween files" -
That is a wonderful summary, and informed me about things that I've always wondered about. I've been using Access for the last 5 years or so because most of my client's applications are single user, or in a couple cases, no more than 5 simultaneous users. I'll definitely be looking at MSDE now, though. If you find yourself putting a query within your business logic part of your program code stop because it's "madness" in the long term. I totally agree, but I find that I don't really practice what you preach. It hasn't really been a problem, either. I'm not sure why, except that maybe I do some really good up-front schema design first. I really need to stop being so lazy, though. Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Sensitivity and ethnic diversity means celebrating difference, not hiding from it. - Christian Graus
Every line of code is a liability - Taka Muraoka
Microsoft deliberately adds arbitrary layers of complexity to make it difficult to deliver Windows features on non-Windows platforms--Microsoft's "Halloween files"Maybe "potential" madness would be a better way to put it. (as I type from my padded office after spending hours fixing bugs in an old app that has queries (many near duplicates, but not duplicate enough to search and replace) peppered throughout over 100,000 lines of code!) :) Seriously though, it's more of an issue when building a large business app that may potentially have a long lifespan and either be used by a wide variety of people with different needs (publicly sold software) or could easily result in a huge amount of data over time that was not anticipated for originally. The main thing I find now that I've started using C# is that it's so incredibly easy now to separate the business part of a program from the data part of a program that it's just a good habit to get into no matter how small the app is.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Why do so many people insist on using it over the web? because compared to the SQLServer management screens, Access is a user-friendly. Access has that sweet interactive front end and doesn't requires "services" or anything else. it's like Excel, but with records. -c
When history comes, it always takes you by surprise.
I want to believe a middle Web-based application is developed by people with a minimun knowledge about computers, not just final users. I can't believe a DB creation-read-write can't be so difficult to understand for them. Moreover when you consider the disadvantages of Access. We are talking about a $25000 project!!!! I can't believe they can't spend a an hour to understand how MsSql Works!!!! If license is a problem, why they don't simply use MySql 4?
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Access is slow, period. Tables cannot have more than 65K records, and a MDB file cannot be larger than 2GB. Access was never intended for server work. Why do so many people insist on using it over the web? SQL Server has three different versions if you want to go small scale and not pay as much money. Or, if you really don't want to pay money, go the MySQL, PostgreSQL, mSQL, etc. route. You'll save yourself a lot of headache after the product is finished this way. Jeremy Falcon Imputek
Sorry I'm not against SQL Server, but I would like to defend Access a bit... Jeremy Falcon wrote: Tables cannot have more than 65K records In my MDB: . I have tables with more than 200k records... . I have more than 250 tables in a database file... . The database size is over 400Mbyte... . I have 40 current clients connected to the MDB file at the same time (in terminal server environment). I'm crazy? :~ Some fiends already answer YES to the question... and they hate me because the develop of the application is around 1 big C++/MFC project that makes the thing easy and fast as butter (the application is over 200k rows code written... with wizards, ok... and it builds 1 EXE file that is over 5000k bytes - I'm not proud of it). Jeremy Falcon wrote: and a MDB file cannot be larger than 2GB don't know if I would like to try in this life :suss: but with the current running... we will go to that size in 4 years! If I have to discuss Access, it's to have a SERVER based database, reduce the net traffic and increase data access security. For the rest, a lot of things are really easier with Access, especially when I ask the users to make their own queries. Consider even to make an application and solve the needing to distribute it as a demo... Access MDB will be easier for sure! And I safe myself from a lot of headache during development and setup... Lately I'm making performance comparison between the 2 databases (SQL/Access); there are not really big differences. For small databases size Access is much better, in big databases the balance gives reasons to SQL. Another point that gives advantage to SQL is "multithreading"; normally SERVER based database drivers (OLE DB) are thread safe. Jet engine was not (in the past, don’t know now... anyway I have to make some simple "tricks" to make code work as well). The real problem for me is a FILE compared to a SERVER database. My applications are still "Windows Framework" based, and there are more advantages to use a database by SERVER. FILE databases (consider even XDB solutions) have the disadvantage that network system administrators have to open a dangerous file sharing to the specific resource, and this increase the network traffic too much. Now I'll really love to try MySQL ($$ reasons). What is attracting me now in the SQL server direction is the "Analysis Server" (data mining, OLAP, ...)... too cool! :cool: Anyway, I like SQL Server, but
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I want to believe a middle Web-based application is developed by people with a minimun knowledge about computers, not just final users. I can't believe a DB creation-read-write can't be so difficult to understand for them. Moreover when you consider the disadvantages of Access. We are talking about a $25000 project!!!! I can't believe they can't spend a an hour to understand how MsSql Works!!!! If license is a problem, why they don't simply use MySql 4?
Gabriel 2 wrote: I want to believe a middle Web-based application is developed by people with a minimun knowledge about computers want all you want. it won't make it so. picture this scenario: a company has a team of developers who have spent years working on a single-user desktop application that uses Access as the back end, where the .MDBs are treated as normal files and not Things which Belong to the Great and Nebulous Database Engine Service Thing. one day, management says "put it on the web. you have 6 months and it must remain compatible with the desktop product's databases." do you: A) learn SQL server (which takes a lot more than one hour to do). support SQL on the web and Access on the desktop, with an imperfect translation module to convert between them? B) stick with what you know and address the real problem at hand: the impossible 6 month deadline? -c
When history comes, it always takes you by surprise.
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Hi Chris, I can answer this one and with some authority too! :) I've worked with both for years for business apps. Ideally if you are making an application that will have "legs" you would make a data access layer in your application that sits between the program and the database itself. This layer would contain all the SQL commands and anything else related to the specific database and the program above that layer would not care what type of database there was. This would ensure that in future if you moved from SQL to Oracle for example you would only need to change that one layer. If you find yourself putting a query within your business logic part of your program code stop because it's "madness" in the long term. :) My answer now would always be to go SQL server route because of scaleability. Because you can use and distribute the MSDE SQL server engine for free it doesn't make sense to start with anything else 99% of the time for any app that is more than just a little in-house utility. Access (JET 4.0) databases are file based so performance really depends upon the actual size of the tables being queried and the number of simultaneous users on a network accessing it. People will often make generalizations that Access is always slower, this is not true at all, in some circumstances Access is faster than MSDE for example. There are really three options if your considering Access versus SQL server because there is also the MSDE which is a "light" version of SQL server that has the advantage of complete compatibility with SQL server for future scaleability and is free to use and distribute if you have a product that comes with it. (i.e. Visual studio professional, Office professional etc). SQL server - Fast server based. It is inherently fast for many reasons, but when comparing against JET (Access) it is faster in cases where a client has to query a large table because the server processes the query and only returns the results of the query. - Saves on network utilization because of the above - Can be scaled up simply by adding better hardware. - Will allow for terrabytes of data - Nearly unlimited number of connections supported - Pricey - comes with many management and administrative tools MSDE - Fast server based - Maximum of 2GB of total database size - Has built in throttle back mechanism that starts to deliberately slow performance when the 11th or more connection is made to it. - Has no managment tools so you need to programatically build databases and administrate
A couple of questions Why is setting the hardware to full duplex a 'bad, bad idea'? Queries result in a full table copy, but how do inserts and updates get handled? Does the copied table remain resident for a period or does it expire/refresh for each subsequent query?
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My company has been developing a significant amount of web apps lately that are going on our company Portal. All of these are outsourced and cost us about $25,000 on average. They are usually coded in JSP or ASP.NET and connect to an Oracle DB. Recently, I've started to hack together some Intranet pages using ASP connecting to an Access DB to throw together some apps with similar functionality quickly/easily/cheaply. What do people think about using Access vs. SQL/Oracle for small to mid sized applications? What is the cutoff point for # of users? What is the max # of records or DB size before deciding that a "real" database should be used. I am talking specifically about web-enabled applications and using Access/SQL as the back-end and am curious how other people make this decision. Chris LaQuerre Internet Technologies Consultant
I would't use Access for a Web-based application. There are many disadvantages in it. X| I think you sould use a real Database as SQL Server or Oracle. If you consider them too difficult to use or expensive for the project, you could use MySql 4.0! Latest MySql Control Center is really good, very easy to use and user friendly. Althought MySql it doesn't provide the power of MsSql/Oracle Server, it's: * much faster than Access and even MsSql Server * free * much better and appropiate for web App than Access :-D * It's easier to use than Access.:eek:
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Gabriel 2 wrote: I want to believe a middle Web-based application is developed by people with a minimun knowledge about computers want all you want. it won't make it so. picture this scenario: a company has a team of developers who have spent years working on a single-user desktop application that uses Access as the back end, where the .MDBs are treated as normal files and not Things which Belong to the Great and Nebulous Database Engine Service Thing. one day, management says "put it on the web. you have 6 months and it must remain compatible with the desktop product's databases." do you: A) learn SQL server (which takes a lot more than one hour to do). support SQL on the web and Access on the desktop, with an imperfect translation module to convert between them? B) stick with what you know and address the real problem at hand: the impossible 6 month deadline? -c
When history comes, it always takes you by surprise.
Ok, allright. If you have many Access based DBs, now we are not talking only about choosing a DB software for a Web Application, but the hole company. I agree in this case, it may be convenient to use Access to directly read data, than running programms to export Access data into MsSql every day. There are many limmitations and disadvantages which should be considered, but it may be a convenient solution in this case.
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Sorry I'm not against SQL Server, but I would like to defend Access a bit... Jeremy Falcon wrote: Tables cannot have more than 65K records In my MDB: . I have tables with more than 200k records... . I have more than 250 tables in a database file... . The database size is over 400Mbyte... . I have 40 current clients connected to the MDB file at the same time (in terminal server environment). I'm crazy? :~ Some fiends already answer YES to the question... and they hate me because the develop of the application is around 1 big C++/MFC project that makes the thing easy and fast as butter (the application is over 200k rows code written... with wizards, ok... and it builds 1 EXE file that is over 5000k bytes - I'm not proud of it). Jeremy Falcon wrote: and a MDB file cannot be larger than 2GB don't know if I would like to try in this life :suss: but with the current running... we will go to that size in 4 years! If I have to discuss Access, it's to have a SERVER based database, reduce the net traffic and increase data access security. For the rest, a lot of things are really easier with Access, especially when I ask the users to make their own queries. Consider even to make an application and solve the needing to distribute it as a demo... Access MDB will be easier for sure! And I safe myself from a lot of headache during development and setup... Lately I'm making performance comparison between the 2 databases (SQL/Access); there are not really big differences. For small databases size Access is much better, in big databases the balance gives reasons to SQL. Another point that gives advantage to SQL is "multithreading"; normally SERVER based database drivers (OLE DB) are thread safe. Jet engine was not (in the past, don’t know now... anyway I have to make some simple "tricks" to make code work as well). The real problem for me is a FILE compared to a SERVER database. My applications are still "Windows Framework" based, and there are more advantages to use a database by SERVER. FILE databases (consider even XDB solutions) have the disadvantage that network system administrators have to open a dangerous file sharing to the specific resource, and this increase the network traffic too much. Now I'll really love to try MySQL ($$ reasons). What is attracting me now in the SQL server direction is the "Analysis Server" (data mining, OLAP, ...)... too cool! :cool: Anyway, I like SQL Server, but
Now I'll really love to try MySQL ($$ reasons). MySql is really good and even easier to use than Access:eek: Be aware to download both MySql (4.0) and MySql Control Center (on the same page). I downloaded the first one and spent too much time until I discovered the second one existed. Lately I'm making performance comparison between the 2 databases (SQL/Access); there are not really big differences On a local machine may be, I have not tested this. But if you are not using a local database I'll have to disagree. 200k records is a too small number to conclude anything. The file may fit in memory, so operations wouldn't take long. Have you ever tried to perform a search in a 10 million record DB (1GB), using Access-filesharing agains SqlServer? There's a HUGE performance difference.
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Sorry I'm not against SQL Server, but I would like to defend Access a bit... Jeremy Falcon wrote: Tables cannot have more than 65K records In my MDB: . I have tables with more than 200k records... . I have more than 250 tables in a database file... . The database size is over 400Mbyte... . I have 40 current clients connected to the MDB file at the same time (in terminal server environment). I'm crazy? :~ Some fiends already answer YES to the question... and they hate me because the develop of the application is around 1 big C++/MFC project that makes the thing easy and fast as butter (the application is over 200k rows code written... with wizards, ok... and it builds 1 EXE file that is over 5000k bytes - I'm not proud of it). Jeremy Falcon wrote: and a MDB file cannot be larger than 2GB don't know if I would like to try in this life :suss: but with the current running... we will go to that size in 4 years! If I have to discuss Access, it's to have a SERVER based database, reduce the net traffic and increase data access security. For the rest, a lot of things are really easier with Access, especially when I ask the users to make their own queries. Consider even to make an application and solve the needing to distribute it as a demo... Access MDB will be easier for sure! And I safe myself from a lot of headache during development and setup... Lately I'm making performance comparison between the 2 databases (SQL/Access); there are not really big differences. For small databases size Access is much better, in big databases the balance gives reasons to SQL. Another point that gives advantage to SQL is "multithreading"; normally SERVER based database drivers (OLE DB) are thread safe. Jet engine was not (in the past, don’t know now... anyway I have to make some simple "tricks" to make code work as well). The real problem for me is a FILE compared to a SERVER database. My applications are still "Windows Framework" based, and there are more advantages to use a database by SERVER. FILE databases (consider even XDB solutions) have the disadvantage that network system administrators have to open a dangerous file sharing to the specific resource, and this increase the network traffic too much. Now I'll really love to try MySQL ($$ reasons). What is attracting me now in the SQL server direction is the "Analysis Server" (data mining, OLAP, ...)... too cool! :cool: Anyway, I like SQL Server, but
John A. Johnson wrote: I have tables with more than 200k records... I'd have to see it to believe it. I'm not talking collectively here, I'm talking about the actual row count per table. If you have more than 65K rows, then it could only be a result of MS increasing the limit for Access 2002. I know from first-hand experience that Access and Excel have had this limitation since the dawn of ages. John A. Johnson wrote: The database size is over 400Mbyte... Which is small compared to an Enterprise-wide database. Some version of SQL Server have a 6GB filesize limit with others don't. Here's another number for ya... FAT32's have a 4GB filesize limit. John A. Johnson wrote: Here I'll love to have your (and others) opinion because my actual experience is only based on Access and SQL Server. I really enjoy MySQL, but sometimes I end up working at "Microsoft shops" and have little choice as to what I use. But, out of Access or SQL Server, I chose SQL Server. If you want to make life a little easier for your users with MySQL, they have a couple of GUI front-ends available. Jeremy Falcon Imputek